Friday, 11 April 2014

Wednesdays are now a flurry of labelling and last minute baking and packing up and chalk-boarding. At 3pm every Wednesday a bell rings and our weekly farmers' market starts.

Of all the things I've done in the last year, helping to get this market started is one of the things I'm most proud of. It has the best committee I've ever worked with, I love them, and the market is going gang busters. We began in February, it was opened by the Mayor, and my Dad rang the opening bell, which was awesome. It certainly is the Year of Family Farming.

So every Wednesday we're not in a comfortable chair nibbling slice or sipping tea. But we're part of the revolution that's permanently shifting people from fluorescent-lit aisles of pre-packaged food to buying their food from the people who grow or make it.

Photo by Tamar Stanford

Is there a Farmers' Market near you? Do yourself a favour and go and buy some fresh apples. And you could take some home-baked slice for the apple farmer, then you'll both be making the world better.

Wednesday, 09 April 2014

Even when you bake for a living, you'll still stuff up the occasional batch of cakes.

Unfortunately when I stuff up a batch of cakes it's not usually, you know, one tray of twelve cup cakes.

This is a blueberry teacake. I make lots of them. I know where I went wrong this time: maths. Bloody maths. When I was carefully explaining to my mother at seventeen that if I got 51% in my HSC maths that was 1% wasted effort because I was never using maths again in my life, I failed to see that I actually wasn't going to end up a medieval historian, but a baker. Who calculates, uses percentages and multiplies every day.

Anyway, the arts degree that came with the medieval history encouraged imagination and so beyond the trays of failed cake there was... trifle!

The cake tasted fine, it just didn't rise at all. Or inversely, sank to buggery in the middle.

But in the pantry there were peaches. Preserved in January in syrup. And we make a bit of custard around here, so I found some jars and made it look vaguely deliberate.

Cake + fruit in syrup + custard = trifle. That's excellent maths.

I hope your day was sweet too.

(Two days posting in a row!! Might even be able to make this a habit!)

xxx

P.S. Claire has posted a lovely wrap-up and some truly gorgeous photos of the 'From Scratch' workshop she came to recently!

Tuesday, 08 April 2014

I've never really been particularly interested in bees, they were always Dad's gig, and that whole bee suit thing was kind of alarming.

When we started talking about moving back down here to the farm, Dad asked if we wanted to take over his hives. We fart-arsed around and spent yet another year not moving until finally Dad sold his hives - he'd had enough, he'd had them since he was sixteen.

About a month later we decided to move.

Those beehives now belong to a very good friend of ours, let's call her Shaztown, and those bees are called Malcolm's Cranky Bees. No reflection on Dad of course, and Shaztown has other (less cranky) hives she's aquired. But every time she handles Malcolm's Cranky Bees they give her grief. So we don't miss them.

Adam has done a bee course and has two hives. He adores his bees. And we adore their honey. We lost a hive over summer, and he ordered a replacement starter hive months ago. Of course it was ready to be picked up when he was away recently, and Dad was also away. Shaztown was working. I had to pick it up.

Which was fine until I arrived at the bee place and the lovely bee man brought out an enclosed mesh box buzzing with 1000 bees and a queen, and there were at least another 100 bees hanging on the outside of the box. "Put it in your boot" was the bee man's instruction. I drive a station wagon. Not being wild about driving in a car with bees flying all around, I put a hessian sack over the box and hoped for the best. Which sufficed, the bees were calm and not in the slightest bit cranky.

At home, I had to PUT MY HAND IN THE MESH BEE BOX and pull out the queen bee excluder and uncap it, so she could eat her way out of it, join her hive and start laying eggs. I couldn't wear gloves but I did put on the alarming head gear. Anyway, in the process of doing this, successfully, with no stings, I became at one with the bees. They. Are. Amazing.

Amazing.

Do you know when they leave the hive they fly in patterns that communicate landmarks to each other? About where the good pollen is and how to get there? AMAZING.

Monday, 17 March 2014

Dad planted an olive tree about the time he planted the coffee, so in the vicinity of 13 years ago. We've always talked about it as the tree that never fruits. We were advised that olives don't need a cultivar like some fruiting trees, and this tree was in the coffee grove, so it was well fed and well watered. Just never yielded olives. We assumed it was an ornamental non-fruiting variety. But it wasn't. It was just waiting.

A couple of weeks ago Adam was in the coffee grove and stood on a fruit. He picked it up, confused, the coffee cherries are currently the size of a tiny pea and bright green and this was fleshy and black. He looked up. The olive tree, let to grow to about 20 metres tall, (if it wasn't bearing fruit it might as well provide shade for the grove), was dripping with ripe olives. Dripping. As olives are, no exaggeration, Adam's favourite food of all time, he was about as excited as I've ever seen him. Which is pretty excited.

Mum and Dad have very good friends who moved to Gerringong a few years ago after retiring from their olive farm near Tamworth. (Seriously, lucky stars anyone?) So it was David and Carolyn Evans that I called while standing under this massively laden tree, with no idea how to proceed.

They're awesome, and they turned up first thing the next morning with instructions and laughs and helped us prune the tree to a reasonable size and pick 27kg of Manzanillo olives.

Most of these photos were taken by our intern Tory (thanks Tors!x)

Carolyn also gave me some great instructions to follow regarding brining and preparing the olives. I think one of the most shocking things about olives is the time they take to brine! Weeks! They're still brining! We sorted into green and black, and we've got a bucket that has 'cut' olives that will be ready quicker, and we trialled one bucket in fresh water but they were so far from being ready this week that we've put them under brine too. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

And when you've got fresh olive leaves, you'd be daft not to have a go at Olive Leaf Extract, right? I used this process over here on Olive Day, and am about to drain it, and now expect to live to 150 years old with a lifetime supply of antioxidant at the ready. I rushed up to the bottle shop at lunchtime to buy two bottles of inexpensive vodka for this purpose and of course, ran into a genteel friend of my mother's. It's a powerful look, at the check out holding two cheap bottles of vodka at 1pm with leaves in your hair, no really, it's for medicinal purposes, really it is.

Could be about 150 years before those olives lose their bitterness and taste delicious. Luckily we'll be propped up by our leaf extract until then.

Pretty excited, did I mention that? Every time I look at those drums of olives in the corner of the commercial kitchen I feel excited that we'll one day, in many many many weeks, have olives from our own freaky fine-I'll-grow-some-fruit-this-year-shall-I Manzanillo tree. Next up on Adam's to-do list (from me): GRAPES! He'll love that.

Monday, 03 March 2014

We ran our first Farm Picnic Day last month. We were very nervous. Like, really nervous. It sold out quickly and we closed it down at 50 people, and I had visions of people eveywhere and chaos and children climbing silos and falling into electric fences and ambulances and lawsuits and me in a data entry job in Nowra and Adam in roadworks.

But you know what? It was fabulous fun.

People are lovely. Particularly people who bother to come all the way down here for a bit of a picnic. Lovely.

We set up a welcome tent and gave the lovely people cherry slice and homemade cordial on arrival. Adam brought out some two-day-old chickens for cuddles and then everyone went for a big walk around the farm and had a look at what we're up to. (Our necks, obviously.)

The seriously awesome Tory, our intern, who arrived four days beforehand, who made it a calmer, better-catered event.

kids lunchbox

grownups lunchbox for 2

As they came back past the kitchen we gave them sturdy brown paper bags with lunchboxes full of farm goodness. The kids got a sausage roll made from our chickens, a savoury muffin, a little pot of handmade yoghurt with our raw honey and a chocolate fudge brownie wrapped in paper.

We gave everyone a map of the farm, pointed out the nice picnic spots and left them to it.

No tractors got broken, no emergency services were called, and I think everyone had a lovely time. Which follows, because they were lovely. We struck an absolutely beautiful day and were grateful for it, and grateful, again, that we can share this adventure and this pretty spot.

We'll do it again.

You should come!

Visitors were encouraged to forage cherry tomatos in the kitchen garden

Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Hello! Jeepers. I've just about forgotten how to log into Typepad. We've been rolling with the punches over here, holding our heads above deep, deep water and singing loudly to a favourite song.

We've done a lot of very fun stuff in a short period of time and I'll catch you up on it all, I promise. Chicken workshops and picnic days on the farm and long table lunches and a brand new farmers' market and more Hayden Quinn and a whole weekend fermenting with Sandor Katz and Milkwood Permaculture...

I know, SERIOUSLY. Much more on Sandor and what's growing on my kitchen bench in the next couple of days.

And also an amazing intern, Tory, who arrived two weeks ago on the eve of the first market and in the thick of it, and who thinks she's here for four weeks but really, we might have to lock the farm gate so she can't get out. Can we do that? She's a nutritionist and wholefoods chef and an all-round beautiful person and we're thrilled she's chosen to spend a few weeks with us. ("Few weeks" or, you know, "forever." No pressure.)

And while we thought he was just here doing an "Unrefined" episode, it turns out Hayden has made THREE extra videos about Buena Vista Farm. One released last Friday and another two to be released over the next two Fridays. I've seen a sneak peak and the last one is my favourite. We feel very lucky. Singing, paddling like crazy, riding the waves. It's going to be a good year. Time to plant cabbages.

Sunday, 09 February 2014

HI!!!! It's been so long and I have so much to tell you, about the biggest week of our lives amongst other things, but it's very nearly midnight (again) and I'm collapsing, so just wanted to share this cool little video that the truly lovely Hayden Quinn (and Sam Evans) shot at our place this week.

Thursday, 23 January 2014

(I'm going to play catch up and post three of these in a row, to get to week 3, you know, being a bit late to get started!)

It's so damn cool that is actually International Year of Family Farming that I've decided to do a weekly moment celebrating it, as we're in it up to our ears, three generations on this particular patch of land, another three before us.

We're aware of how lucky we are, perhaps I'm most grateful of all that everyone works together here so happily (it's not just PR spin or show, we actually all get along).

This week has been a tough week with a massive electrical storm at it's start. We think a lightening strike freaked out our 8-week-old meat birds (due for processing the next day) and they stormed the electric netting fence. We lost (literally lost, never seen again) some of them, while about half perished in the netting or via foxes who must have been on the scene as quick as a wink. It meant we couldn't honour our delivery to our supplier in Sydney this fortnight, and that all the upfront costs already paid for that batch of birds were lost.

But like farmers do everywhere, every day, we move on. And we get to do it together. We pick fresh corn. We salvage tomatoes from the market garden and turn them into delicious tomato jam.

And we thank our lucky stars for small hands participating in fresh food, clean dirt under fingernails and for dinner on the table with zero food miles (and no chemicals).

Sunday, 19 January 2014

An old post for a new day. This one from April, 2011, when we found ourselves in hospital with a tiny Ivy with pneumonia. Today is splinter-free and easy breathing, hope your Sunday is too. xx

It's not all about the birthing. Or the nursing or the sleeplessness or the timeless, endless juggle. Actually for me it's not about that at all.

It's about the yards, really, the hard yards.

And if you'd told me in the beginning that holding a sick child would be a good and strong moment, I wouldn't have believed you.

But that is where it's at.

When you hold your baby and they're burning up with a fever, I reckon that's when the real mother or father in you comes out. Not at breakfast, or storytime or bathtime, although these things are critical, it's at the bottom, right down in the dark and scary moments that we find ourselves as parents.

It's doing the time. Carrying the torch. Holding the lantern. Particularly the first time they're really sick. You realise at that moment that you are fundamentally vulnerable. This little person is so much more important than anything else. You can feel the earth shift. Or maybe it's you.

Little blighters.

With Henry we found ourselves in hospital, in surgery, when he was only 6 weeks old. Inguinal hernia. I opted to hold him while they gave him the general anesthetic. For his four subsequent surgeries, I made Adam go in. There's nothing like holding a small person as they drift into unconsciousness, I could do without it again, thanks.

Being there when they wake up, that's also a highlight. And if we're collecting parenting merit badges I'd have to list any time your child is strapped to an MRI or xray trolley, bound tight with adhesive medical tape to the table, another cannula in their arm. Oh Henry, I hope you become a wonderful cook and I can be a little less of a parent and a little more of a dinner guest.

It'd be good to think you might get through without any of these moments.

That's not going to happen.

Unless you are so super careful that your smallie doesn't do anything or go anywhere you're probably going to cop a hard yard or two.

My mother, like yours I'm sure, is full of war stories. A baby going into febrile convulsion in the car, miles from home. Glandular fever knocking a child out for three months. Children falling off the top of slippery dips. Broken bones. Dreadful burns. Spectacular injuries.

And although they're awful, these moments really count.

So there's more to my Good Friday story. As Adam and I were walking out the door between the doctors visit and the hospital, Tilly showed me her thumb and said, "it's really sore, Mum." I looked at it. I thought: please don't let that be an almighty splinter right under her thumbnail, the whole length of the nail.

It was. With no end-y bit to pull it out.

My excellent mother in law (who was a nurse for many years) reviewed the situation while Adam and I were with Ivy at the hospital. There was no way around it. She needed it taken out. So once Ivy was settled and had seen the pediatrician, Adam went back, got Tilly and took her into Accident and Emergency where she proceeded to involve the entire waiting room in her colouring in.

While Ivy was having xrays upstairs in the children's ward, Tilly was bravely having the mother of all splinters extracted. I believe she was stoic and wonderful up until the point the doctor stuck a needle with local anesthetic under her thumbnail. Even then, according to Adam, she was pretty fantastic. And able to see the benefits of injury (chocolate). I saw her just after the extraction and she was pretty upset but valiantly holding onto her smarties. The doctor said to Adam that there was a reason this (splinter under fingernails) was used as a medieval torture device. It's bloody painful.

I'm so proud of my stoic little person. What a champion.

Even though there was still a big red line under the fingernail where the splinter had reached the nail bed, she checked up on her little sister, gave her a pat, and then suggested Adam take her home. Which he did.

Unfortunately you can't drink alcohol in a children's ward. Or even hot coffee or tea.

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Hello! I've been spending long days in a very hot kitchen, how about you?! I try not to get horribly jealous of friends on holidays, in the long summer holidays, you know? Who post lovely photos of kids doing lots of fun things and going places and "chillaxing" as Tilly - just seven - says.

Around here we try to stop for icecream, and trips to the beach, and chillaxing, and we try not to beat ourselves up about working and lobbing kids around and juggling play dates and deliveries.

And every now and then I'll grab an hour and do something I want to do. Which today was a bit of peach action.

A local farming friend drives to Araluen every January and picks up boxes of peaches and nectarines for his wife to preserve. She's an older lady, who shared lots of wisdom about preserving with me when I first moved back here. They asked if I wanted some fruit, I said YES PLEASE!

And so I put up some peaches. It's possibly way more fun than it sounds, and seriously, those glorious golden jars of summertime on the shelves in my pantry just make me happy. There's an earnestness about preserving, a feeling of won't-run-out or ok-if-the-zombie-apocalype-comes. We can lock the door and eat through the pantry shelves before we're zombied. If that's even a verb.

Peaches are pretty easy though. Sterilize some jars, drop fruit into boiling water, peel skins off, quarter, pack them into jars and pour boiling sugar syrup over the top. Screw on your lids and process in a hot water bath (I use my stock pot with a cake rack in the bottom) for twenty minutes.

Golden jars of sunshine.

I got a bit excited reading Jackie French who makes you feel you could grow anything - plant an apple core! - and planted some seeds of the beautiful peaches. Word is around here you can't grow peaches, the fruit fly is too bad.

I'm sure that's probably the case, but the memory of peaches on the trees in the backyard here when I was very little (the old trees were all pulled out about twenty five years ago now) and that perfect fruit we've been munching on? ...